Incident Overview
On Dec-10-2024, the LABUBU token smart contract was exploited, resulting in a loss of approximately $120,000.
The core vulnerability lay in the token’s transfer logic, which allowed senders to increase their own balances simply by transferring tokens to themselves. The LABUBU contract did not properly handle transfers where the sender and recipient addresses were the same. As a result, a malicious user could repeatedly “send” tokens to their own address, artificially inflating their token balance without cost.
By exploiting this flawed mechanism, the attacker drained around $120,000 worth of tokens from the system before the vulnerability was discovered and addressed.
Incident Report
Protocol Information
Market Context at Time of Hack
What the Attacker Needed to Succeed
Understanding the prerequisites for this type of attack helps auditors identify protocols that are most at risk and helps developers build better defenses.
What Auditors Should Check
If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to LABUBU, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (December 2024).
- Verify all logic paths related to Other are guarded by proper access controls and input validation
- Review privileged functions (owner, admin, governance) for potential abuse vectors - centralization risks should be documented and bounded with timelocks or multi-sigs
Master these auditing techniques with hands-on labs and real exploit scenarios in the Smart Contract Hacking course.
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The LABUBU hack is one of many attacks that skilled auditors are trained to detect before deployment. Master real exploit patterns and defense techniques with hands-on Web3 security training.